Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Inconvenient Christians: Al Gore's Movie for Free

Whoa, Nellie! Want to see Al Gore's movie, "Inconvenient Truth," on global warming... tickets for free? Restoring Eden, a group of environmentally concerned Christians, want to help their sisters and brothers see this flick at selected theatres. You gotta love the web page moniker: Inconvenient Christians. Makes me want to start a band.

1 comment:

OK, here is my tirade. It was formed over time from statements that said what I wanted to say only with better data and more clarity. Please indulge me as it is a bit lengthy. - Hussite

In the desire to offer aid and economic development to the poorer countries of the world, primarily in Africa and Indonesia there is a conflict between politically driven environmental policies verses third world humanitarian concerns. What is becoming a primary concern is the assessment of the scientific evidence of the extent of human contribution to global warming, the prediction of the impact of climate change on human communities and the rest of the ecosystem, and the prescription of major reduction of carbon dioxide emissions as a solution to the alleged problem. There is no agreement specifying how much emission reduction is needed to achieve the goal of counteracting global warming which ignores one of the most important aspects of the climatology debate: How much benefit would be gained at what cost to the global economy. This global economy is not just an economist abstraction. It is real people who depend on that economy for jobs, income and the food, clothing, shelter, transportation and all other goods that they need."

The irony is that the celebrities, media and even some religious leaders who are twisting common definitions of ethics, morality, social responsibility and compassion for the poor to justify global warming agendas promote policies that actually represent the greatest threats to the world's poor. Over two billion of the world's people still do not have electricity for lights and refrigeration in their homes, for hospitals and clinics, for schools, shops, offices and factories, for wastewater treatment and other modern technologies that we often take for granted. And yet these poor countries are told they mustn't build coal or gas-fired electrical power plants, because First World countries are concerned about global warming.

Where is the outcry among activists about the fact that over 2 billion of the world’s citizens do not have electricity, or that over 2.5 billion do not have access to basic sanitation? Where is the outrage that over 4 million preventable deaths occur each year due to tuberculosis and other lung infections stemming from indoor pollution caused by using dung as fuel for fires? What about the 6 million people who die from unsafe water or spoiled food?

Quoting Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Denmark:“There is no doubt that pumping out carbon dioxide from fossil fuels has increased the global temperature. Yet too much of the debate is fixated on reducing emissions without regard to cost. ... Despite our intuition that we need to do something drastic about global warming, economic analyses show that it will be far more expensive to cut carbon dioxide emissions radically than to pay the costs of adapting to the increased temperatures. ... For the cost of Kyoto (which would postpone projected 2100 temperature levels for all of six years and cost $150 billion to $350 billion annually compared to $50 billion in global development aid) for just one year we could solve the world's biggest problem: we could provide every person in the world with clean water. This alone would save two million lives each year and prevent 500 million from severe disease. In fact, for the same amount Kyoto would have cost just the United States every year, the United Nations estimates that we could provide every person in the world with access to basic health, education, family planning and water and sanitation services. Isn't this a better way of serving the world?”

Many environmental issues are well-founded and serious and include widespread diseases in the developing world arising from inadequate sewage sanitation and drinking water purification; use of primitive biomass fuels like wood and dung for heating and cooking; and primitive, low-tech agricultural, industrial and commercial practices. Others are ill-founded or exaggerated concerns that include fears of catastrophic man-made global warming, overpopulation, resource depletion and cataclysmic species extinction.